Pieter Dircksz. Santvoort

There are very few surviving drawings by this short-lived but highly innovative Amsterdam artist; the largest documented group, consisting of 15 drawings, was formerly in the Kunsthalle, Bremen, but 13 of those were either destroyed or stolen during the Second World War. One surviving drawing by the artist is now in the Lugt Collection, Paris.¹ In that sheet, and also in another formerly in the collection of the late Professor Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann², the freely handled wash, applied over a rapid black chalk sketch, and the trees rapidly outlined with the point of the brush, are all rather similar to here. Another of the drawings formerly in Bremen (inv. 1772, now lost), is dated 1623, emphasising the originality of Santvoort's distinctive landscape style, which stands at the very crossroads between earlier, mannerist traditions of Netherlandish landscape and the dramatic and revolutionary move towards naturalism that was just gathering speed in Dutch landscape art. 

1. Dessins de Paysagistes Hollandais du XVII^e Siècle, exhibition catalogue, Brussels/Rotterdam/Paris/Berne 1968-9, cat. no. 134, reproduced plate 40

2. Sold, New York, Sotheby's, 31 January 2018, lot 284